A light-programmable biofilm displaying the Hello World message (image taken from Wikipedia)

“Hello World”
– A tiny slice of web history

The phrase that has been used (since 1974) to prove that a programmable object can process an input to return a simple output was to start with rather flawed.

The observer of the output would most likely be just one [insert various level of happiness] programmer, and no one else in the world would have a clue.

Perhaps the phrase should have been “This Works” but I guess it’s more pleasing to humanise inanimate objects.

In 2004 at the beginning of Web2.0 (the marketing term for the second evolution of the internet) when it started to become mainsteam for anybody to be able to read AND easily write (Blog) to the web the phrase “Hello World” took on a much more, literal, meaning.

In the last 5 years thanks to the mass sharing of content (arguably Web2.5) via social media this meaning has grown exponentially. (More about social media past, present & future will be posted here over time).

Today (2012), publishing your thoughts and re-publishing others for (potentially) the whole world to see is now almost as easy as talking to someone sat next to you.

It is also easy to be blasé about just how amazing that is every time you update your Facebook status, post a Tweet or comment on a message board (anybody still do that regularly?).

That’s why I thought I would take a moment to write this prequel post, reflecting on that which came before making it possible to easily make my first real blog post. Coming soon…